


awoo

by arahir



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, Misunderstandings, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Werewolf AU, Werewolf!Shiro, human!keith, there's the angst lads, to the tune of 'my boyfriend's back'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 23:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16690813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir
Summary: Keith gets the dog of his dreams. Shiro meets the boy of his. It goes (less than) amazing.He could leave. He could disappear and then meet Keith by chance on the street, start over—and leave Keith dogless and heartbroken in the interim. Or, he could come clean and hope for the best.Both options, he realizes, smiling bleakly at his warped reflection on the back of the peanut butter spoon, are abysmal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic brought to you by a 102 degree fever and several mistakes

He finds the dog at the edge of the woods.

The trees are quiet and warm at the end of summer; he lives for the way it smells there. That's what sets him off first. The usual wet, organic scent is tinged with something sharp and dangerous like metal, a hint he catches on the breeze before the quiet hits him. No low hum of crickets, no leaves scraping in the breeze—the woods are stagnant with it.

The hair on his arms stands up; he loves the silence, the stillness, but he’s scared now. Fear permeates the entire clearing—and then he sees it.

At the foot of one of the giant oaks, something covered in black hair and half hidden under a bush but twice too large for it. For a moment, he’s sure it’s dead because that has to be where the smell of blood is coming from and its fur is glistening with it, but then he sees the rise and fall of its barrel chest.

It senses Keith when he kneels next to it and growls, but Keith's not an easy scare. He shushes it and tries to pick out the worst of the damage, hands hovering. It’s missing a leg, but that wound is scarred over and old. There are two wicked lacerations over its ribs aren’t fatal but look deep and painful, and a gash over its snout, glistening in the dark.

“You've been through the ringer,” Keith mutters.

The dog doesn't growl again and it doesn't bite, but it's panting hard. Keith strips his hoodie and tries to wrap it so he won't press on the wounds when he picks it up, but there's only so much he can do. It keens as he rises and it's heavy, but Keith has years of hauling boxes and engines more cumbersome than this under his belt.

There’s no leaving it there, anyway.

At home, he elbows a space clear on his bed and lays it down as gently as he can and then books it to the bathroom where his old first aid kit is kicking around under the counter. The wounds are dirty; he washes them with as much care as he can, making a mess of the towels he sacrifices to the cause. The dog keeps its eyes open, panting, occasionally looking back at Keith, but too exhausted to fight him on it. Keith’s blood pounds in his ears as he cleans the wounds and wraps them. The dog stays perfectly still, until Keith gets to the mark below his eyes. He finches back, lips drawing up, exposing teeth that are wicked and long on a low growl.

“It’s okay,” Keith promises. “Just a little more.”

The dog looks up at him with big, dark eyes, and blinks once before he lets his head fall back to the sheets and closes them completely.

 

* * *

 

There's only one bed, and in retrospect giving the dog his wasn't a perfect plan, but it seems unfair to move him once he’s settled. Keith grabs every spare blanket in the house and piles them on the floor by his—the dog’s—bed and settles in for the night.

The low sound of its breath from the bed is calming. It's been ages since he shared a room with anyone or anything he felt comfortable enough to sleep around and it lulls him to sleep faster than the silence does on a good night. For once, worry doesn’t follow. His mind is too wrapped up with the thing in his bed to stick on anything else.

Somehow, it's the best sleep he's had in months; the room is bright by the time he wakes up, and wakes up well after dawn, groggy with oversleep—and trapped.

It takes a moment to comprehend that the room is light, and yes, it really is that late, and the reason he's still in his makeshift bed is because a hundred some pounds of warm dog decided midway through the night that he made a better bed than the actual thing. Keith can feel its breath tickling his ear, almost snoring. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding; if it's well enough to get off the bed, it'll live.

He tries to move and it sniffs his ear. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees its tail thump on the floor.

Deep-down, the part of him that he didn't know still existed, the part of him that begged for a dog four birthdays in a row, the part of him that still asks, _Can I pet it?_ every time he comes across an unsuspecting dog walker goes giddy like it's Christmas morning.

He brings up his free hand to scratch behind its ears, the dog's tail goes double-time, and that's it—he’s sold.

 

* * *

 

The dog is, of course, perfect. He stands stalk-still while Keith gives him a check up. Keith has to do a double-take because the wounds are mostly sealed shut. He takes out the unnecessary stitches and the dog stays still for that, too, watching Keith from inches away with those black eyes. “Good boy,” Keith soothes when they’re done, and scratches behind his ears and then at a spot on his neck that has his back legs kicking. All the wounds are pulled back together--except the one on his face. It’ll leave a scar, but it suits him somehow.

Breakfast is a challenge because he doesn't have dog food, but he has eggs and bacon and if the dog has any complaints, he keeps quiet. He follows Keith around the kitchen, hopping after him, tail swinging. Keith makes up two plates—extra bacon for the dog—and sits cross-legged on the rug across from him, watching him with a kind of fascination. The dog is delicate about it for a starving stray. When he's done he lies in front of Keith with his ears forward, the picture of courtesy.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Keith slides his plate over.

It’s a weekend, so Keith doesn’t need to worry about making excuses at work—not that they would mind or care. He has enough vacation saved up to take a week if he needed it.

There’s a kind of A-B-C to finding a stray animal, he knows, and he approaches it with a kind of dread. His neighbors are people he avoids if at all possible by force of habit, but after breakfast he makes himself call. The dog doesn’t have a collar and when he mentions a vet to himself, the dog starts growling and doesn’t stop until Keith puts the phone down, so scanning for a chip is out.

He settles for the next best thing. Lance lives one house down with two roommates, either of whom Keith would have preferred, but beggars can’t be choosers at eight in the morning on a Saturday. He walks in, takes one look at the dog standing in the foyer behind Keith and, jumps back to the door, and then he turns like this is some kind of joke Keith has staged for him. “You said it was a dog. That's not a dog, dude.”

“Yeah he is. What else would he be?”

Lance shakes his head. “I don't know, but look—" He bends down, raising his hand to mid-thigh height. “ _Dog_ ,” he enunciates slowly, like Keith is particularly slow, and then raises his hand to his waist, not breaking eye contact, “... _Not_ dog.”

“He’s not that big,” Keith scoffs, but Lance is right. He’s almost as big as Keith’s bed. Still—he didn't call Lance for a critique or his visual analysis skills. “You don't recognize it?”

“No,” Lance says, squinting. “It looks like a movie prop. Are you sure it's even real?”

The dog barks at him.

It sets off a tiff that ends when Keith pushes him out the door and locks it behind him. This is why Keith doesn’t talk to his neighbors, but if Lance doesn’t know it, that means it doesn’t belong to anyone in their neighborhood and that’s all the answer he needed.

 

* * *

 

They run into their second hiccup when he brings the dog to the pet store.

There are things a person needs to keep a dog and he's no expert, but it seems like a good place to start. In the interim, he tries to tie together a couple of spare shoelaces as a makeshift leash but the dog gives him a long look that says _no_ and _no, don’t even try it,_ so they go in casual. Just a boy and his three-legged dog and if people want to stare, they can.

Only a few do. Together they pick out two bowls, food, a leash and a collar, and one or two or a dozen toys. The dog follows right by his side, tail up and wagging. Keith lets him pick out most of it himself. He's got a discerning eye. Most of the toys he disdains, but he settles on a rubber pig that makes a sound that might have been intended to imitate an oink, but lands more firmly in the category of a fart, and a few more standard toys that make Keith mentally nod and agree because that’s what dogs like. This is a normal dog. Lance doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They’re all respectable choices. The collars give him pause for a few minutes, too, but he finally noses over a dark leather set with a price tag so high it makes Keith start spontaneously sweating.

He looks down and tries to form the word _no,_ but it stops on the tip of his tongue. The dog sits back and wags his tail and looks up at Keith with those big, dark eyes. Keith’s done for. He tosses it all in the cart and makes for the checkout resolved not toss the receipt the moment the clerk hands it to him.

The woman at the checkout smiles when she sees them coming. It's a quiet morning and they're almost the only ones there except for the brother and sister arguing about fish five aisles over.

“Who’s this handsome guy?” the clerk asks.

Keith glances down. If the dog has an opinion, he hasn’t given it yet. “I don’t know.”

The woman's smile falters a little. “Oh. Okay. And how about you?”

As far as Keith knows, they shouldn't need his name to buy dog food, but he pulls out his ID anyway and hands it over. The woman takes it after a long moment and reads it over. “Keith? That's a—that's a cool name.”

It's not. “I guess,” Keith tries.

She starts ringing up the order, in between a few more painful attempts at small talk that are beyond Keith's comprehension. When she hands back his card, she finally cuts to the chase and leans across the counter a little. “I know this is forward,” she tucks a little lock of sandy hair behind one ear, “but I was _wondering—_ ”

Before she can say another word, the dog leaps up in between them, front paw on the counter. He’s huge and almost taller than Keith on his hind legs. The woman jumps back a foot, but the dog doesn’t do anything else. She gives a startled little laugh and reaches under the counter to fish out a treat for him that he accepts after a cursory sniff. “I was just—” She leans around him—or tries to. The dog angles his head so she can’t get a straight look at Keith. She moves and the dog moves with her.

The Keith briefly considers abandoning the cart and the whole endeavor and making a run for it just to escape the embarrassment, but she gives it up after a moment and finishes bagging everything in silence. The dog hops off the counter and follows him outside.

“Thanks,” Keith mutters once they're out of earshot.

The dog butts its head up against Keith's leg, almost in answer.

 

* * *

 

Having a dog, it turns out, is not only the best thing that's ever happened to Keith, but also the coolest. They go to the park afterward because they can and Keith doesn't even need the excuse of his sketchbook. Fetch is a wash. The dog barely turns to the stick as it flies by his head, and same with the tennis ball and the little plush shaped like a demented rabbit that Keith threw in the cart on a whim. The pig is good for ten minutes of fun, but it’s not clear what amuses the dog more—the sound it makes or the fact that Keith can’t stop giggling at it. They end up playing tag instead to the amusement of a half a dozen kids and a few bored parents. The fall air, the dappled sunlight, the frolicking. It’s like a scene from one of those daytime movies they used to play at the home, where the dogs talk and inexplicably are sports savants.

Keith has a brief vision of the dog attempting to play basketball with three legs. It’s cooler in his head than it would be in real life. “Can you sit?” he asks instead. Baby steps.

The dog cocks his head and sits.

“Can you lie down?” Keith tries.

He can. He can also roll over, jump, and stand on his hind legs on command. When Keith asks him to play dead, the dog twitches, staggers, and then falls over in a heap of deadweight that’s so convincing Keith can't resist a nervous pat to check if his chest is still rising. He gets as far as laying a hand on the dog’s chest before the dog rolls and tackles Keith in one impressive move that has Keith pinned and giggling under a hundred pounds of lickey dog.

Keith buys them both hotdogs for dinner from a stand on the corner and the dog hops up on the park bench next to him while they eat. He's oddly dainty about it. Daintier than Keith, anyway.

They both put away two more after that. The third they share, to the amusement of some passersby.

They head back at sunset, both exhausted and grass-stained and smelling like sweat. The day killed Keith’s wallet, but it’s also the best one he can remember having in a few years. All thoughts Keith had of printing signs or taking the dog around house-to-house just in case, just to check, fall away. Finders keepers, after all. If the dog wants to go, he knows where the door is.

“You’re a good boy,” Keith whispers that night, lying in bed, one hand buried in the dog’s fur.

The dog licks Keith’s cheek in answer.

 

* * *

 

It’s rare that problems in Shiro’s life are so clear cut. In a way, he should be grateful, because this is simple. He isn’t a dog.

He transforms back and feels the bend and crack of muscle and bone shifting under his skin as he grows and gains opposable thumbs and height and hair that he tells himself is styled devilishly no matter what the rest of the pack says about it, and then he lies there, staring at the ceiling, listening to Keith breathe beside him, and tries to figure out how he got from A to B.

Matt would know. Matt could tell him in short and clear words, but Matt can’t know because if Matt finds out, Shiro will never live it down.

As far as the rest of the pack is concerned, he’s still on vacation. Getting jumped on the way back into town wasn’t part of the plan, but he took care of it, found a bush to lie under and nurse his regrets. He would have healed by morning anyway, but in the wolf’s mind, things are hazy in pain--and the boy had soft hands and a kind voice.

The mark on his face is the only thing that still smarts. Someone’s going to give him lip about it when he gets back, but Keith tutted when he pulled the bandage off with gentle fingers. He said it made Shiro look distinguished, and then he’d wrapped his arms around Shiro’s neck and pushed his face against Shiro’s fur and— _oh, god_ , he realizes with a renewed shatter, _he thinks you’re a dog._

For the first five nights, he can’t transform back. His body knows it’s injured and he’s stronger in that form, but he’s also different. His brain reduces reality down to the bare essentials and little joys and the morality of how many legs he’s walking on doesn’t matter so much in the moment. There wasn’t a bone in him to object to a warm bed and good food while he healed—and Keith smells good. He’s hot asphalt after it rains and the burn of a campfire and something warm in the oven and a dozen better things he can’t put a name to yet. By the time he got back to himself, it was too late to run.

Beside him, Keith scoots closer. He’s drooling on Shiro’s shoulder now, dark hair sticking to the corner of his mouth. He’s handsome and kind and has strange taste in food but never hesitates to share, likes long walks and hotdogs with the same toppings Shiro does. Shiro’s been keeping a mental inventory and the unavoidable reality on the other side of it is that Keith is rare and wonderful and Keith—

Keith thinks he’s a dog.

He sneaks out from under Keith and lets himself into the bathroom and then heads downstairs to grab a snack and tries to make it something inconspicuous that Keith won’t notice is gone. His new self-assigned duty in addition to being the best boy—Keith assures him he is multiple times a day—is to clean out the leftovers from the back of the fridge while Keith is at work.

It's going amazing.

He leans against the counter, naked except for the towel he pilfered from the bathroom and the collar he's trying to ignore and sucks on a spoonful of peanut butter and reviews his options. He could leave. He could disappear and then meet Keith by chance on the street, start over—and leave Keith dogless and heartbroken in the interim. Or, he could come clean and hope for the best.

Both options, he realizes, smiling bleakly at his warped reflection on the back of the peanut butter spoon, are abysmal. Keith is wrong. He’s not the best boy; he’s the stupidest boy. Shiro grabs another spoonful for the road and then heads back upstairs, leaves the towel how he found it, changing back as he climbs up on bed. He can’t fix it that night. Better to forget it. This is his vacation and anyway, things have a way of coming together.

He tells himself that like a mantra as Keith's scent fills his nose and Keith's heat permeates the bed around them. These things always work out. He'll think of something.

 

* * *

 

It's a nice thought, and it lasts for all of the next four hours.

 

* * *

 

Life with a dog is the kind of starry-eyed dream Keith spent his whole childhood longing after. And after his Dad, it was even more distant. That made it sweeter.

He feels bad leaving the dog at home during the day, but when he gets home, he's always waiting by the door. The first time he opens it, the dog bowls him over and for the first time since he inherited the house, he has someone to come home to.

They never end up using the dog food. The dog, to his credit, gives it his best effort, but watching him try to choke it down one agonizing kernel of kibble at a time is torture. He manages hot dogs with a healthy amount of gusto so they switch to that.

Strange little instances of luck start popping up all over. The sink of dirty dishes he's been avoiding for a week spontaneously clean themselves—or he somehow does it in his sleep, which wouldn't be a shock, but then the trash and recycling take themselves out, too. His Dad joked about cleaning elves visiting then any time Keith got up the gumption to do chores without needing to be asked. It's a good memory, but not one he took literally. Now, he starts to wonder.

What it is, he realizes later, is a false sense of security. The universe always gets its due and any run of good luck has its equal and opposite.

He just doesn't expect it to come in the form of a mutilated corpse.

It's strewn over the frost-crusted lawn when he opens the front door that morning, so pieced apart he can't tell what it was. Not human, at least. He's left standing on the porch, coffee in hand, staring out at the mess of it, thankful not for the first time that the house his father left him is set back in a cul-de-sac without much traffic. Before he can work up the nerve to think about grabbing a shovel, a sound rises behind him like the rumble of a freight train in miniature. The dog comes bursting out past him in a scrabble of claws on hardwood, growling, like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse has been a hundred pounds of beat up dog the whole time.

“Hey, hey—” Keith makes to grab his collar, but it's not necessary. The dog stops on the porch in front of him and then turns and pushes at him, backing toward the door in a series of awkward stumbles that land Keith on his ass inside the threshold. The coffee goes down with him—but not on him—and the dog spins around and joins in the fun, licking Keith's face in what he lets himself imagine is an apology.

“It's okay,” Keith murmurs as he stands. “Just a bear.”

Bears eat deer. Sure. In his head they're all honey and berries and those creepy cartoon ones in the toilet paper commercials, but they eat meat. They have to. It's a mountain town, or a hill town, at least, and bears live in the hills. Maybe they don't usually leave a horror show on a front lawn, but there's a first time for everything. This is a lot of firsts, all at once.

The dog disagrees, but he lets Keith back outside on the condition that Keith lets him stand two feet away and growl at anything suspicious, though the worst that comes along is a couple of crows curious about the mess.

Keith picks it up once bone at a time on the tip of the shovel and hides it all in a shallow hole where he won't have to think about it.

It sets the tone for the day. The morning is a cold one and cloudy, but not in the way that promises more than gloom. He has to wear gloves to wield the shovel and by the time he's done, his nose has frozen what feels like solid and his wet hair feels like it’ll break to pieces if he shakes his head too fast.

To the dog's seeming relief, Keith decides it’s a couch day. That’s what the weekend was made for, but the house used to be too quiet for it. Sitting in the quiet drove him mad—that’s how he found the dog, walking at dusk in the trees, exchanging one silence for another.

He lights a fire and pulls out a book, reaches for a blanket but forgets it when the dog hops up on the couch and decides despite being just the smallest bit larger than the average dog, lap status is more of a state of mind. They while away the day there in warmth and quiet, with a few breaks for food. It helps him forget about the prospect of a bear using his lawn for its slaughter bench.

It’s dozy. The warmth and dark lull him down into sleep in half a quiet hour.

When he was young, sometimes he dreamed of his mother. In his dreams, she had a kind voice and a soft touch and she never sang, but sometimes she spoke to him and touched his hair. At the edge of sleep, he has the dream again. The phantom feeling of someone running their fingers over his forehead and cheek, but the voice is gruff. his father was caring, but not in that way.

It’s a strange dream. When he wakes up in the evening, he has enough will worked up to get some exercise at least. The weather isn’t better, but it's good enough for a walk.

Usually the dog is prim about it. All of Keith's dog knowledge comes from longingly watching strangers walk their own, but he assumes it's par the course or at least not strange that the dog is usually waiting by the door with the leash in his mouth. Today, not so much. When Keith tries to put the leash on him, he dances away toward the kitchen. Keith follows and the dog slips around him and takes the stairs two at time, blinding fast even on three legs, leaving Keith to trudge up after him. They can't all be good days, he tells himself as he goes. Dogs are—dogs.

He’s waiting for Keith in his room. Their room. The dog stares him down over the bed and in his mind, the scene plays out: the dog dodging him, running around the bed, back out the door. It could go on for hours.

“Are we really going to do this?” Keith asks.

The dog cocks his head as if he can't imagine what Keith is talking about, so Keith sighs and tosses the leash around the back of his neck. “Look—I'm going for a walk, and you can come or not.” He takes the gamble and walks out the door to the sound of the dog giving a tiny, pathetic, _aroo?_

By the time he reaches the front door, he can hear the scrabble of claws on wood floor again. The dog comes swinging around the corner so fast he runs into Keith's legs, but then he sits back and waits while Keith reaches down to snap the leash on his collar.

Maybe the dog is trying to tell him something, but it's not like Keith can't take care of himself. He managed it for years before the dog. Bears want to avoid him as much as he wants to avoid them, or so every nature PSA has taught him. “It's fine,” Keith murmurs, rubbing the short hair on the dog's forehead—but on his way out the door, he grabs his knife.

The wind is cold outside and it takes all of his will to suppress the shudder that tries to sneak down his spine when he sees the pile of fresh dirt in the corner of the yard. It seems unnaturally quiet, like the air is holding its breath. There’s no one on the street, no cars up the road. His usual path takes him out through the trees—there are old trails and some new walking paths, paved and all. The dog doesn’t help his paranoia. He stays close and keeps pressing into Keith’s legs, accidentally pushing him around, running into the back of his knees and stepping on his shoes.

They keep getting caught up in the leash together. The fourth time it happens, Keith decides enough is enough for one day and turns them around, much to the dog’s seeming relief. He’s never pulled at the leash before, but he practically drags Keith the last mile toward home.

The woods are still too quiet. There’s something ominous about the silence, something that raises the hair on the back of his neck. No birds, no crickets, and maybe it’s just the time of year, but it makes him shiver. The jeans and hoodie he's wearing feel like cobwebs, like he'd might as well be naked in the cold and twilight. They round a corner in the path where the trees are thickest and for a moment he can hear footsteps.

It's in his head, or it’s the echo of his own steps off the trees and path ahead. The sunset is setting and the way it filters through the leaves is eerie, a shade off red, something less ominous and more seductive. It makes the air into honey. He slows his steps and tries to listen and then he hears it for certain—footsteps. The dog stops cold and tenses beside him, and his growl is so low that Keith mistakes it for the pounding of his own heart for a moment.

The man who rounds the corner is dressed in an old khaki jacket and jeans, hair back in a ponytail, the entire look so affected-casual that it shakes Keith out of it. Some college student bored on break, trying to find somewhere quiet away from family. Even if he was a threat, Keith could take him. He lets out a sigh and tries to pull the dog ahead, but he’s still an anchor at the end of his leash, glaring and growling.

“Sorry,” Keith murmurs and tugs on the leash uselessly. The dog’s dug his claws in too hard and it's one thing to lift dead weight but another to drag it. He steps closer, shielding the man from sight while he passes, and whispers under his breath, “It's okay. He's not going to hurt you,” and then looks over his shoulder to apologize again—but the man has stopped cold.

“What,” the man says with care, “ _the fuck_.”

Keith steps back and loosens the leash. “Excuse me?”

The man isn't looking at him though. His eyes are on the dog and they're wide in shock. “Excuse you? Excuse me, where did you even--”

The dog's growls have trailed off but he doesn't look any more willing to move or be magnanimous about things. The dog looks unique. He looks cool. But even as he thinks it, it occurs to Keith that there's something else unique about the dog and he sees red for a moment. The missing leg isn't his fault and he's perfect. He's a perfectly normal dog, except that he's the best one on Earth. “What? Never seen a dog before?” Keith asks. He sets his hand on the dog's back, over his raised fur, trying to calm them both.

The man's mouth falls open and after a moment he laughs without humor. “That's not a dog, kid.”

 “I’m not a kid. And I'm getting really tired of people telling me I don't know what a dog is—”

“You don't know what a dog is.” He steps closer and leans to look at the dog, laughs again. “Holy shit. What happened? Did you get stuck that way?”

He's talking to the dog. Keith's mental assessment slides from harmless stoner to something else. As if reading his mind, the dog moves in front of him and growls again. A second, more terrible thought slips into Keith's mind: it could be his. The dog gone missing, injured, no one looking for it, the recognition in the man's eyes and the way the dog won't stop growling. As soon as he thinks it, the dog barks once at him, high and sharp, and the man puts up both hands and takes a step back.

That's all Keith needs to know. He pulls the knife off his belt and flashes it just where the man can see it. It doesn't matter if the dog belongs to this man. He's his own dog now and he's Keith's responsibility and he's getting two treats when they get back for dealing with this. No—three. “Listen, I don't want any trouble.”

The man's eyes trace from the knife to Keith's face and then to the dog and back around again. “Okay! Okay, I get it,” he says, and then looks at the dog again. “If you need help, say something, but otherwise I'm just going to assume this is a weird f—”

“Don't,” Keith points the knife at him, “talk to my dog.”

“He’s not a—fine. Whatever.” The man steps past them but as he goes he shakes his head. _What the fuck,_ he mouths at the dog.

Keith sends him a look that he hopes conveys the full depth of his disdain and tugs the dog after him.

It’s somehow more than unsettling, more than strange. The dog almost pushes him into the house when they get home and Keith takes it to heart by double checking all the doors and windows are locked tight. He has a shower and then heats up leftovers—spaghetti and meatballs, third night in a row, though there’s less than he remembers—and splits half with the dog. They call the night early and Keith settles into bed with the dog against him, his face pressed into the soft hair at the back of his neck. It'll make him sneeze in the morning, but the closeness is worth it. It doesn't matter. He repeats that to himself like a prayer. The dog isn't going anywhere.

He's mostly right.

 

* * *

 

The sky outside is still dark when he jerks awake.

He checks the clock by his bed in a haze, but it's barely past midnight. The now-familiar warmth is gone from his side. Being alone is eerie, though it seems impossible that it took a week for him to make a habit out of company.

He's already getting up when he hears the voice downstairs. For a moment he thinks it's the television left on by mistake, but it's only one voice and it's coming from the kitchen. He pulls on sweats and then grabs the knife off the side table where he tossed it the night before and makes to grab his phone, too, but it's gone.

 _Left it downstairs,_ he tells himself, and slips out the door. The floor is cold under his feet and he kicks himself for not pulling on socks to muffle his steps, but he can be quiet. Anyway, whoever is downstairs doesn’t seem too intent on listening for interlopers. At the top of the stairs, he can start to make out words. The man’s voice is deceptive in how soft it is.

“...No, it’s not that kind of vacation—would you just—Matt, please.”

A break in. It has to be, but he checked the doors and windows and getting in any other way would be loud—loud enough that he would wake up. Loud enough that the dog would, at least, and then a worse thought occurs, because of course the dog would never stand for any of this.

His grip on the knife goes so tight his knuckles are aching by the time he gets to the bottom of the stairs.

“No—no, Matt—” Whoever Matt is, he’s not listening. Keith flips the knife and retests his grip before he edges around the corner.

There’s a naked man standing in his kitchen. Not totally naked—he has on one of Keith’s hoodies though it’s more of a crop jacket given his size, and it’s only draped around his shoulders. The dish cloth wrapped around his waist isn’t accomplishing much, but the spirit of decency is there. Keith tries to find words, but can’t think of anything coherent before the man sees him out of the corner of his eye and gives a quiet and heartfelt, “Oh, fuck.”

“Who are you?” Wrong question, he realizes the second after asks it.

The man sees the knife and backs up against the counter.  “Wait! Just wait—”

Keith raises the knife. There are eight more on the counter in a wood block right behind the man—sharpened, too—but hopefully the man won’t notice that. “Where’s my dog?”

The man doesn’t answer. From the other end of the phone, there’s a sound that might be a scream, might be a laugh. The man sets the phone down on the counter and slides back along it, like he’s going to make a break for it, but if he thinks Keith is a passive player in this he’s mistaken.

“ _Don’t_ move.” Keith says and makes it a threat and then tries to keep his voice level when he reiterates, “What you did with my dog?”

The man freezes, looks at Keith, and then at the phone, and then back again. “Ok, so, the thing is…”

From the other end of the phone, the tinny voice starts yelling again and this time it’s yelling for sure, though Keith can’t make out what it’s saying because the man is looking at Keith, dead in the eye, and he has his hand up like he’s calming an animal.

His one hand, Keith realizes. He only has one arm.

“Keith, just... look.”

Before Keith can move or say anything, the man changes.

It’s both too fast to follow and horribly slow. It sends butterflies spinning in Keith’s stomach, and then in a rush of air that makes his hair shift and his ears ring, the man is gone. Like an optical illusion, his eyes can’t sort out what the blackness he’s looking at is until he moves to sit. It’s a dog standing before him. His dog, looking ridiculous with the hoodie and towel draped over his back.

The dog sits a moment, staring at him where he’s frozen. As he watches, the change goes in reverse, dark hair becoming pale skin, bones lengthening, and then the man is standing there once again with a look on his face like he’s tasted a lemon or thinks he’s about to be yelled at—the same look around the eyes the dog had the first time it knocked something over.

“Sorry?” he offers, sheepish.

The tinny voice fills the silence again, and this time, Keith can tell it’s laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if there are errors, don't tell me. they are my children now.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes two more transformations for Keith to absorb what's happening. The man says his name is Shiro. He uses small words, all of which make sense individually but not in the order Shiro is using them. He’s not a dog, he says, and not a wolf, and not a person, but maybe something in between. He’s sorry for not telling Keith sooner. It’s a misunderstanding or a mistake, no harm and no foul.

Really, all said and done, not a big deal at all.

“Okay,” Keith says when he's finished.

“Okay?” Shiro asks, bangs falling in his eyes, hand keeping the towel around his waist in its precarious place.

Keith nods, focusing on the wall over his shoulder. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Are you—are you sure? ...Do you need a glass of water?”

Keith shakes his head and turns to walk himself into the living room with a deliberate one-two step and then he sits on the couch there in the dark and takes the deepest breath he can. Shiro follows him. He crouches down in front of Keith and then reaches up to turn on the lamp on the table beside the couch. He has long arms, a long reach, and he lost the borrowed hoodie at some point so the muscle of his chest and shoulders is on full display, limned in the soft light of the lamp.

“Keith…” he starts, and then looks down and sighs like he’s mustering himself. “I’m sorry. If I could have told you before, I would have.”

His eyes are a shade Keith can’t find a name for in the dark. Maybe earnest is a color all its own. There are more scars than the one over his nose and lost arm—they etch the skin of his shoulders and back and chest and face. “Keith,” he repeats, eyebrows up in the middle and wrinkling with genuine concern.

Keith traces his eyes upward, to the juncture of Shiro’s collarbone and neck. “You…” he starts, and then isn’t sure how to finish. Shiro leans closer, sets his hand on Keith’s knee, the heat of it sinking through the thin sweats, his head cocked a little to one side, eyebrows speaking their own language. “...You let me buy you a collar.”

Shiro sits back on his heels, glances down as if he can see fine, black leather and silver buckling sitting around his neck from that angle, and then back up at Keith, red dusting over his cheeks under the scar. He opens his mouth, tugs at the leather, and then shrugs. “I’ll pay you back?”

Keith folds his arms and tries on his most devastating glare before he discards it for something more tired. It’s not about the money. It’s not about the _collar_. It’s about seven nights of sleeping with— _that_ in his bed. It’s taking _that_ for a walk. It’s trying to feed _that_ kibble. _You licked my face,_ he wants to say. _You licked it a few times and we both liked it._ Whatever the look on Keith’s face, it’s not accomplishing the intended goal, because Shiro's still looking at him with big eyes and half a smile.

“Look,” he starts. He’s good at making his voice go serious. Keith wants to roll his eyes but resists for the sake of common decency and his own dignity. “Keith… there are people out there. People that are trying to hurt you.” The grip he has on Keith’s thigh goes tight.  

The thing on the lawn, Keith realizes. The blood and viscera, the skin and bone—he tried to forget it, but it’s good to know that bears are beyond imagination. The far more likely option was rogue dog men. That’s better. Sure. He wants to get on the floor. He wants to get on the floor, press his forehead to the polished oak paneling, and wake up with his normal dog, all of this nothing worse than a faint dream he’s already forgetting.

“People,” Keith repeats.

“Well. You know. _Werew_ —”

“Don’t. Don’t say it.”

“...Bad people. It’s probably a good idea if I stay here for a while.”

Keith thinks he's misheard. “What?”

Shiro closes his eyes and when he opens them, he’s wearing the most earnest look he can muster. It’s almost a smolder. “This was neutral territory. Packs have… zones. We have to respect that. The night you found me, I was attacked on neutral ground—something is changing. Me being here made you a target. I'm sorry Keith.”

Again, all the words make sense individually, but not in that order.

“Then you should leave, right?” Keith asks it soft, almost too quiet to be heard, because it's not until the moment the words are leaving his mouth that he realizes it's a loss. This is him losing someone, again, even if it was someone he only had for a week. “Maybe I should get a real dog,” he murmurs to himself.

Shiro's grip tightens again. “No. No, it's too late. I've been here. They know. They'll hurt you or use you, or—please, Keith. Trust me.” The sight of him looking so sincere overlays itself with the dog begging for his plate and he is, Keith realizes, that much of a sucker. “I’ll pay for groceries,” Shiro throws in, sweetening the deal with a little smile.

Bold words for someone wearing a sackcloth dish towel and nothing else. “Yeah? Then where’s your credit card, old man?”

Shiro jerks back, opens his mouth, puts his hand to his chest, right below the collar. _Old man,_ he mouths. “It’s at home. You know I'm not—old, right?”

He has a face that won't age. A dozen years from now, he'll still have the boyish grin, the fine cheekbones, the honest, dark eyes. It's a face that could ruin a kingdom, Keith thinks with an admiration he's already decided to box up and put away somewhere dark. The faded hair is the only sign Shiro might be mortal, and even then, the white makes it seem as if that's what hair was always intended to do; it's every other person with monotone hair that's got it wrong.

It’s late and this isn’t an argument he wants to have tonight. The vague hope that this is a bizarre dream is still dancing around the back of his sleep-addled mind. “Fine,” Keith says, and again with more gusto, “Fine. Stay.” Shiro sits up straight, leans forward— “But you sleep downstairs.”

Shiro wilts, but only a bit. Keith tries to convince himself it's the only logical choice and his world is still grounded in that much, at least.

 

* * *

 

Keith settles into bed alone that night, into the quiet and the cold. Maybe it is better that Shiro stays downstairs and keeps guard, maybe it is logical, but as soon as he starts thinking about it, Keith checks himself because the alternative isn't one. Minutes tick by as Keith traces the shadows on the ceiling, listening and waiting for something to give.

He left Shiro with an extra pillow, two blankets, and the offer for more if he needed it—though why bother offering, he thinks, trying to punch his own pillow into something semi-comfortable. It's not as though Shiro hasn't had a week to memorize every corner of the house.

If he's lucky, he's faring better than Keith.

A week with the dog spoiled him and it should be weird knowing what it was, but instead a persistent ache builds at the hollow of his throat and lodges there as a lump of unearned grief.  When the red numbers on the clock by his bed tick over to two in the morning, he climbs out of bed, aimless beyond proving to himself that the lack of sleep is a personal choice.

The house is too quiet and that doesn't make sense. It’s not like the dog was loud.

The _dog_.

He trips toward the bathroom, aiming for a glass of water, but diverges on the way. Just to check, he tells himself. Just to make sure his guest isn't making off with the dvd player. That's the most expensive object in the house. It was the last thing his Dad bought before the end, before Keith got shipped off to foster care, the house left like a time capsule in a trust for him.

It's a wry thought. Shiro is too earnest to be a petty thief, but still, it can't hurt to check.

He trudges to the top of the stairs and then pauses. The black shape at the bottom looks fake, like faux fur on the collar of a knock off jacket. Keith makes his way down as quiet as he can and sits on the last step, right above the amorphous lump of dog.

He reaches out, rests one hand on Shiro's neck, light as he can. Not light enough. Shiro jerks and then rolls his head back to look at Keith in the dark and then opens his mouth, tongue lolling—and Keith needs to train his brain out of the instinct to be cool with this. Shiro scrambles to sit up and goes for the face lick but stops himself at the last second, looking a little shamefaced about it.

Good. Boundaries.

“Why are you sleeping here?” Shiro cocks his head in answer. No words from him, then, but he's seen enough of Shiro naked for a day; it's no great loss. “Never mind,” he says, standing. “Come on.”

He doesn't look to see if Shiro follows him back up the stairs, but the click of claws on hardwood is familiar by now. He slides back into bed without expectation, leaving a conspicuous space on one side. After a moment the bed dips. Shiro collapses next to him, his weight landing a little too far to Keith's side out of habit and Keith is too tired to fight it, too tired to make it hard.

 

* * *

 

“What do you usually do when I'm gone?” Keith asks the next morning over breakfast.

Shiro looks up at him and smiles, a little wistful. “Wait for you to get back?” He seems to realize that's not a valid answer before Keith can glare at him and course corrects to, “Sometimes I clean.”

He's a little big for a cleaning elf, but it's not as far off the mark as it should be. “...Don't you have a day job?”

Shiro takes long enough to reply that it's an answer of its own. Cool. An unemployed weredog made him pancakes for breakfast. It's fantastic, in the literal sense. In other words, ridiculous. “I have money,” Shiro mutters as a weak explanation.

“Okay. Do you also have a cell phone?”

“I—I do. Of course I do. Not with me.” The smile doesn’t fall of his face, but his tone is off. It wasn’t supposed to be a trick question. It was supposed to circle around to an offer for Keith to go get it for him if he needed it. “I lost it in the fight.”

He’s lying. It’s something subtle in his tone, but it’s not worth calling him on. If Keith were stronger and wiser, he'd have kicked Shiro out the night before. Now Shiro’s sitting across from Keith on one of the stools on the other side of the counter, the picture of joy and innocence, image marred only by the collar that's still around his neck. “Please take that off,” Keith mutters around the forkful of the pancakes Shiro magicked up out of nothing. He put chocolate chips in them, which Keith didn't know was an option. Even so, they haven't quite killed the taste of dog. Shiro flipped around in the night, and for all that Keith doesn't mind a little dog hair, there's a difference between that and an entire tail flopping into his mouth at six in the morning.

Shiro frowns at him, so Keith gestures at his neck with the fork and realization dawns. “Oh! Oh, sorry. I got used to it,” he says, a little chagrined.

Keith squints and gives him a look he hopes is scathing and then turns back to his plate, bending all his focus on the wholesale massacre going down there. It's delicious. Shiro is a good cook—maybe even a great one. He pulled the pancakes out of thin air and ingredients Keith didn’t know he had. Usually he settles for leftovers or two minute toaster waffles, but by the time he got downstairs, Shiro was hard at work over the stove, fan humming above him, room filled with the sugar-sweet smell of frying batter.

The night before, Keith dug out a box of his Dad's old clothes from the garage for Shiro to pick through. He had to veto when the first thing Shiro went for was a ratty jean shirt that, god willing, hadn't seen the light of the day since the seventies. Shiro settled for jeans and a dark flannel button up instead, tied off the right sleeve above the elbow. It's not ideal, but it's better than the literal nothing—barring towels—that they were working with before, and Keith's trying not to think about how good Shiro looks in casual comfort clothes. He could wear a garbage bag and look good.

Maybe the dish towel wasn't the worst case scenario, Keith thinks, stabbing a bite off the last pancake. It's heavy on the chocolate chips and in the top three best meals Keith can remember eating in the past year.

Shiro's sitting there, watching him eat, good humor playing havoc across his face, pulling up his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth. Keith shoves the entire last half of the pancake in his mouth in one whole syrup soaked bite, just to watch the smile fall off Shiro's perfect mouth.

“Work,” Keith tries to say, but settles for waving in the direction of the upstairs bath in explanation when the pancake proves too much to talk around. Not that he owes Shiro one. It's his house, his job, his life.

Shiro frowns, but follows him into the living room and then up stairs and waits outside the bathroom door as Keith brushes his teeth and ties his hair back. He stays a step behind Keith for the next ten minutes as he gathers his keys and wallet, hovering over his shoulder, and then follows him to the front door, too. Keith stops in his tracks and turns in time to see Shiro catch himself before he runs into Keith's back.

“You don't need to follow me around the house.”

“Habit,” Shiro mutters, scratching at the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

He means it. For the first time, Keith lets himself consider that maybe getting beat up and stuck as a dog for the better part of a week wasn't a walk in the park for Shiro either—except when it literally was. All his little mannerisms are painful in their familiarity.Keith wants to put his head in his hands, but fights the urge.

“...Are you are sure you don't want me to make you lunch?” Shiro asks.

“Yes,” Keith replies too fast, trying to will down the heat in his cheeks. Shiro’s standing too close; Keith has to tip his head back to look at him properly. No one has made him breakfast in years and this is the first time anyone has offered to make lunch. He has the brief and terrible image of Shiro in an apron, handing him a lunch box before work, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he sends Keith off. In his head, the collar is still there, and it's not—it's not right. “You can use whatever you want while I'm gone.” Keith gestures at the entire house—as if Shiro doesn't know that. “There are snacks in the pantry.”

“I know.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “I bet.”

The house has never felt bare before, but now that he’s looking at it through a stranger’s eyes, there’s not much to it. An old stand computer, basic cable on a box television, a weird assortment of books, and nothing else to entertain. Maybe it'll drive Shiro off.

Keith isn't sure if it's hope or dread that chases the thought. They both twist his stomach the same way.

Shiro cocks his head. “Thanks. I'll guard it with my life, scout's honor.” He puts a big hand over his big chest and smiles. _Scout's honor._ With him it might be literal. Your friendly neighborhood dog-man and local eagle scout.

Keith steps around him, toward the door, expecting Shiro to stay inside, but instead he follows Keith out onto the porch.

“What are you doing?” Keith asks.

“Walking you to work?”

As a child, Keith had gone through an enthusiastic and brief phase of wanting to talk to animals, of believing that if he listened close enough and tried hard enough, they could whisper him all sorts of secrets. The desire never really went away, but for the first time, he thinks maybe it wouldn't be worth it if this is how the mind of a dog works. “You're not walking me to work.”

Shiro puts his hand on his hip. “Yes, I am. It's not safe for you to be out here alone.”

Keith fights off the insane urge to repeat his words back at him in a dumber voice. “It's only a mile, though. I walk it every day. There are street lights.”

“ _Keith_.”

It's imploring, a little stern, a little let's-be-adults-about-this, Keith, and that’s it. Right there on the porch, in crisp dawn light, he’s being sassed by his own dog. The collar is still in Shiro's hand where it's pressed to his hip; if he had two arms, they'd be folded one over the other, he's sure.

The cul-de-sac is quiet, but it also serves the unlucky purpose of having four houses that half-face each other and Keith isn't the only one on his way to work. A Jeep that has to be Hunk's is midway out of the drive and going suspiciously slow—the perfect speed for rearview mirror rubber-necking.

And Keith realizes he’s standing on his porch with a strange man. A strange man holding a leather collar.

“God.” Keith puts a hand to his forehead and then shakes his head. “No.” He gently pushes at Shiro's chest, backing him into the house. “No,” he reiterates when Shiro is past the threshold and staring down at Keith with a glare, “I am walking myself to work. I'll be back after five.” He pulls away and steps back but keeps his hands up. “Stay and make sure no one leaves anymore dead animals in my yard. Or don't. Whatever you want.”

Shiro starts to argue, but Keith is already off the porch and down the walk. He can feel Shiro’s eyes on his back until he turns the corner at the end of the street.

 

* * *

 

The diner is a part time gig but the owner is Keith's speed, so they get along well. It's a hole in the wall that serves soups and sandwiches and nothing else, on pain of death-glare if anyone tries to ask. It didn't seem like a sustainable business model at first, but the location is prime.

On break, he thinks about calling to check on Shiro, remembers that the man doesn't have a cell phone, and then considers running home to check before he realizes he's more worried about a grown man being able to take care of himself than he was about leaving a hurt dog alone.

Or maybe he's worried he'll get back and Shiro will be gone, leaving him nothing but an excess of dog hair and a half empty jar of peanut butter.

Sal doesn't hold to service-with-a-smile much, but Keith puts on his best face as the day carries on. It gives him something to be distracted by if nothing else. A woman comes in with a baby, and then an elderly man with a little dog. They're regulars. The man always takes a full five minutes to order, though it's always the same thing, but it gives Keith time to make up a little to-go bag of mini meat sliders for the dog.

The man takes it with a smile and leaves his usual tip. As Keith watches them go, the oddest longing comes over him. That could be him, the vision seems to say. Just a quiet old man with lunch for two.

Maybe he'll bring Shiro a plate. It's not the same thing, not by a long shot, but most of life is making the best of the situation you found in the woods and invited into your bed.

Sal breaks him out of his musing. “Can you close today?” he asks as he walks out of the back.

He's already taking off his apron so it’s less a question and more of a polite request. Those aren’t usually his thing. Keith spares a thought for Shiro, but he didn't promise to be home by any specific time. If Shiro had a phone, all of this would be easier.

“Sure. Hot date?”

“None of your business,” Sal growls, and then in the same voice orders, “Take something home for dinner. You look like someone starved a scarecrow to death, kid.”

That's his parting shot. Keith's used to it by now. It’s either that or something about Keith’s hair and the existence of hairbrushes in case Keith wasn’t aware, but at least he cares enough to bother bothering.

“Thanks,” Keith shouts after him, but a new rush of customers is already coming in and the rest of the afternoon is chaos from there. They only have five tables, but playing clerk, cook, server, and janitor is a tall order. By closing, he’s on his last leg and praying no one else comes in late.

His luck isn’t that good.

Right as he's getting ready to lock the door, the bell chimes. It’s a group of four and god knows what about the shop makes it seem like somewhere you’d want to get dinner. The sign above the door is old and greyed and there’s no advertising outside to entice people in. Keith sometimes thinks that Sal’s intent is to actually deter customers and this is all some strange attempt at a tax dodge for him.

They don't look like Monday evening customers. It's already dark out and though the shop is on a main drag, it's not one with much nightlife. The group of girls pull up extra chairs to the small table in the corner and the sound of them screeching across the floor makes Keith wince. Once they're seated, he realizes they must have missed the sign that says _Order Up Front_ and think he’s going to serve them.

Seconds. He was seconds from freedom.

He balls up his anguish and steps around the counter, grabbing a discarded receipt to write their order on the back of as he goes. The group looks off. It's not something he can put his finger on, but the table goes dead quiet when he steps up to it. Every eye turns to Keith, each face wearing the same expression, like Keith's presence is amusing and they can't imagine why he's bothering them.

For a moment, he feels like an item on the menu. Something about their eyes makes them too bright, too intent, but as soon as they start ordering, it fades. They sound normal enough and the table falls back to small talk as he makes their food in record time.

He tries not to watch them over the counter, but the clean up after he hands them their to-go bags is boring. He busies himself making up a couple sandwiches for he and Shiro for dinner and hopes it's not too personal to make another man a sandwich when he has no idea what he likes. Meat is a safe bet—unless it isn't. Dogs can't be vegetarian, but maybe the rules are different if you part time as a dog. The thought sends him down a quick spiral, until he remembers the box of take out broccoli and beef that disappeared under mysterious circumstances. No. Shiro can eat his ham and cheddar with arugula on brioche or he can shut up and eat peanut butter for dinner.

When Keith looks up again, the group is gone.

 

* * *

 

It's an odd cap to the night, but not bad. Six has come and gone and running fast toward seven in the evening by the time he gets out the door. The cold outside almost slaps him in the face. He should have brought a real coat. He might have remembered to if Shiro hadn't been literally dogging him around the house. At least the walk isn't a long one.

The streets are deserted, but it’s a Monday night. That’s normal, he tells himself once and then twice more and then one more time when a dodgy street light starts blinking as he approaches and passes its halo of illumination, pulling his half-hearted jacket closed against the cold.

It takes him by surprise.

Even paranoid, even careful, the hand on the back of his jacket is unexpected.

Before he can shout, before he can take a breath to work up the energy to, he’s shoved against a wall so hard it knocks the rest of his breath out. _Should have brought the knife,_ he thinks to himself, kicking out and twisting in their grip. He only gets a flash of hair and yellow eyes before he breaks free and springs for the entrance of the alley they were pulling him toward—but he only makes it a foot. The grip on his hair is wicked tight and they have him shoved back against the wall in seconds.

“I don’t have money,” he says to the brick, trying to preempt this. He’s never been mugged, but he’s seen one and stopped it, so he’s not a total stranger to how it works. They want his cash. It’s their bad luck the most he has on him is a smartphone 5 generations past current and a wallet with nothing more than a couple fives and a credit limited card.

They flip him around without answering. His stomach flips and then he wants to laugh. It’s the girls from the bar. Behind them, the streetlight isn't bright, but it's enough to brighten their edges in the dark.

The one that still has him pinned to the wall is taller than him, wider, and stronger by far. Her hand is like iron on his shoulder, grip strong enough to bruise. Her other has his wrists in a vice.

He tries to push against her anyway, and she laughs. “Hell no.”

“I said I don't have money. I’m a _waiter—_ ”

“We don't want money,” says a soft voice over the big one's shoulder. Only half her face is visible, hair hanging over one eye, but the one eye he can see clearly catches the light in a way it shouldn't. The two next to her are in almost full shadow, and still, he can see the glint in their stares, too.

Until that moment, it seemed stupid, like some long con or candid camera stunt. _Here's the guy we convinced to let a naked man live in his house for a week. Isn't that great?_ Or, at least, _this_ part was a lie. Keith was an easy mark and a free meal to Shiro and it didn't matter so much that Keith wanted to fight with him about it to get the full story. There was something about it so fantastical that even seeing it illustrated before his eyes, it wasn’t quite real.

Not like this.

The woman's grip tightens as one of the others steps forward, high ponytail cascading over her shoulder. She cocks her head the same way Shiro does, but now the pose looks wrong—less dog, more doll-like. “Oh, you're a pretty one.”

“Isn't he just?” the woman holding him mutters. “Who knew he had taste?”

Keith's not pretty, not by any metric, and their tone is all wrong. He tries to come up with something cutting, but his mouth is too dry. “I don't have anything you want.”

“No, but you’ve got something that mutt wants,” the big one snorts.

It doesn’t take much deeper thought to figure out who they’re talking about. “You've got me confused with someone else.”

“No, we don’t,” the long-haired one laughs. “His smell is _all_ over you.” She takes another step and now she's close enough that he can see the chemical sheen of her lipstick and the glitter in her nail polish when she lifts a hand to his face. He's shaking now at the false lilt in her voice. That reaction can’t be normal. He doesn’t scare easy. She grips his jaw, nails cutting half-moons into his skin as she twists his head to one side. “What do you think?” She throws the words over her shoulder at the other two. “Rough him up a little?”

Her voice isn’t human. Her movements are too graceful—truncated, as if she’s used to getting the most action out of the least energy. And then he registers the pain. Her nails are sharp and getting sharper as she holds him there in an iron grip. He tries to move his head and then they _bite_.

Blood. He can feel it well up and bead on his cheek with a tickle, mingling with sweat. It's terror, liquid and sliding down his spine in defiance of the cold night air that's sending goosebumps across his skin and stealing his breath. Her attention is still on the two behind her.

Before he can think about it and project what he's going to do, he gathers himself and his wits and and then jabs his knee up with as much force as he can muster, aiming for whatever he can reach.

It connects, solid with her stomach. She lurches, rips her hand away, bending to cough.

“The fuck—” It’s only for half a second, but the one holding him loosens her grip enough for him to break tree and sprint for the street.

He only makes it a few steps before something hits across the center of his chest, knocking him back and knocking the breath out of his lungs. When he’s down, a kick connects with his stomach, sharp and hard and then a hand on the back of his collar hauls him up before he can get his bearings. This time, when they throw him against the wall, it's with strength that can't be human.

His body hits like a stuffed toy, head cracking against the wall so hard it sends his stomach to his throat.

“He's human,” one of them says past the ringing in his ears, almost with a laugh. She sounds surprised. “...I say we get rid of him.”

He blinks up at them, leaning on the wall to hold himself up, arms wrapped around his middle, fighting the urge to retch. His body is running on instinct and panic and a primal, desperate need for this to not be how this day ends. If he had his knife, if he had Shiro—

“We can't. You know how Lotor gets.”

“I don't give a shit what he says. I'll do it, and if he gets bent out of shape, it'll be on me,” the big one growls, staring down at him.

She doesn't wait for an answer, but no one tries to stop her as she approaches. Keith waits for her to get in close and aims another kick, but she's ready for it and dodges with a snort, and then her hands are on him. The grip at his throat is like a vice, like jaws that mean to rip more than suffocate. He claws at her arm, but his nails are too short to do any damage.

“Zethrid,” someone starts—but they're both interrupted.

He mistakes the sound for the rush of blood in his ears or a truck passing on the street. The hand around his throat loosens as the woman spins and then she mutters a quiet, “Fuck.”

Shiro looks different in the night.

He’s still clothed, still human, but his head is down a fraction of an inch, enough that it makes him look wrong. The sound is coming from him—the _growl_ , Keith realizes, because it's not human and the only thing faster than the relief that courses through him is the fear that comes with it.

“You're on our turf,” the woman with the ponytail says, but it hasn’t got enough teeth to be a threat. Instead it comes out desperate, like a whine. She’s scared, too.

“He is my turf.” His voice is too hard, too deep, like stone on stone, grating.

Keith tries to speak, but his words won't come. He coughs on the attempt and when he blinks, Shiro is looking right at him, eyes almost seeming to glow in the dark.

“Hey, come on, we were just messing around—” someone starts to say, but she's cut off by a hiss to shut up from one of the others, and then by Shiro's low growl again.

“Get out.”

“Look—”

“ _Get out_.”

Someone curses again; the sound of feet on concrete, fading into the night is the only other sound that filters through. His eyes most close at some point because when he looks up again, Shiro is only a few feet away and staring down at him with an unreadable expression. Keith tries to push himself up and knocks his head on the wall in the process, pain blooming across his vision.

He reaches up to the back of his head and pulls his hand away, wet heat sliding between his fingers. “What…”

Shiro doesn't speak for a moment, still watching him, watching his hand and the blood there. The rush of Keith’s heart in his chest still can't settle on one way to feel—relief, more than anything, but his adrenaline won't settle and when Shiro reaches out to him, it’s too fast. His nails are long. They shouldn’t be long. Keith can't hold himself back from the full body flinch; it takes them both by surprise.

“You weren't joking,” Keith says, trying to lighten the mood, but his voice breaks on it.

“No,” Shiro murmurs after a breath. “I wasn’t. Come on. Let’s go home.”

He says it so quiet and sure, voice back to its soft, friendly lilt, and then he reaches out again. This time when Keith's body flinches from him, Shiro pushes past it and then he's gathering Keith up in a one-armed hug. He uses it to heft Keith up until he can cradle him against his shoulder. It's an inhuman feat of strength.

He's warm, though. Keith almost sinks into that heat as Shiro starts walking, slow and sure. He presses his face into the soft flannel over Shiro’s shoulder before he realizes what he's doing.

“I can walk.”

Shiro hums, but he doesn’t stop walking. It's not a reply. If anything, he hefts Keith higher. Show off.

“Put me down,” Keith tries, more forceful, even though his voice is still shaking. They've made it a block and it's not late; someone's going to see if they haven't already. There's only so much shame a man can take in one night. He kicks a little, feeling like a child, and Shiro stops long enough for Keith to slide down. The move lacks any grace and if it weren't for Shiro's hand on his arm, he'd be on his ass in the gutter in seconds. As it is, he manages to right himself with Shiro’s help and start down the street, Shiro hovering beside him.

He wants to snap at him for it, but he wants Shiro there more.

A block down, he stumbles. When Shiro wraps his arm around Keith's shoulders, he lets it stay. “How you know I was in trouble?” he asks after a moment, past the chatter in his teeth.

“I had a feeling.”

That’s... vague. Keith glances at him and realizes what it actually means is, _I was on my way to get you anyway._ “How did you find me?”

Shiro snorts. “...Followed my nose.”

_His scent is all over you._

He should be mad, he thinks, but the cold won’t stop trying to seep through his jacket and Shiro’s arm is the only thing grounding him. By the time they get home, the shivers have progressed into an all-over shake. He almost trips through the door, but Shiro catches him again and pushes him inside.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Keith tries to say, voice cracking on another shudder. The house isn't cold.

Shiro locks the door behind them and then kneels down until he's low enough to catch Keith's eye. “You got scared. It's okay. You got hurt—you’re in shock.” He takes Keith’s hand and holds it for a moment before he rises again and pulls him up the stairs and toward the bathroom.

Cleaning up the back of his head stings, but that’s the worst of it. His throat still feels rough, but the only spots of bruise and broken skin in the mirror are where the claws dug into his skin. He got out lucky. Another minute and his ass would have been grass, but that reality is still sinking in. It was so fast, so sudden—a footnote at the end of a long day full of the mundane.

It still doesn’t seem real. Shiro does, though.

He’s is a line of heat behind Keith, sleeves rolled up as he tends to blood and bruises. The tied off sleeve draws Keith’s attention in the mirror. When Keith first found him, he was broken, but it wasn’t the first time. Shiro is covered in scars, but he brushed it off like nothing—and here, Keith can’t think past one scrape in an alley.

“...What if they come back?”

The question slips out by accident. Shiro’s gaze is focused on the gauze he’s using to dab the blood out of Keith’s hair. He glances up to meet Keith’s eyes in the mirror. “Then I’ll kill them.”

Keith shudders again and Shiro leans forward to drop the gauze in the trash. Keith can feel his chest against his back through layers of cloth, hard muscle that un-tenses as Shiro straightens. He surprises himself with the pang of longing that lodges in the pit of his stomach. It’s the come down, the fear, a physical reaction more than anything.

He presses back, almost by accident. Shiro makes a soft sound and then draws his arm up around Keith’s waist, holding him for a moment.

“You’re okay,” he soothes. He sounds like he’s talk to an animal. “Get some sleep and it’ll be a bad memory.”

“But what about dinner—” Keith cuts himself off. He must have dropped the bag with sandwiches in the alley. For some reason that minor mistake seems dire, or at least pathetic.

Shiro pulls away and pushes him toward the bedroom with a gentle hand at the small of his back. “I’ll make something. I’m worried you’re going to fall over—go on. I’ll wake you up when it’s finished.”

He’s not wrong. Keith’s vision has been in a tunnel since the alley and walking to the bedroom feels like he’s trying to pick his way though a hall of fun house mirrors. He manages to pull his shoes off and then flops into bed, sparing the last bit of energy in him trying to tug the comforter over his body.

Shiro never wakes him.

At some point in the small of the night, he feels the bed shift and a body slide in behind him, a nose and breath against the back of his neck, and then an arm slides around his waist, anchoring him in place. He blinks, but his head is still swimming.

“Go back to sleep,” Shiro whispers to the dark.

Keith can’t find a reason not to press back into his heat and do just that.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!!
> 
> [[fic on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/)] [[fic on twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1070750137280946176)]


	3. Chapter 3

The headache is unreal. When he wakes up, it's beating a path through his head like a high school marching band at their first practice and he wants nothing more than to pass out again, but he has work and he's had worse. It's not his first bad night—but the first in a few years.

Someone—Shiro—left him four orange pills and a glass of water that's still cool to touch. He pops them all in one go and by the time he's brushing his teeth, he starts to feel mostly human again. The smell of coffee pulls him downstairs.

“You're awake.”

Shiro is seated at the counter, but the moment Keith comes into view he's off the stool and running over. Keith is still taking the morning in one piece at a time and the pitch of Shiro's voice is a momentary setback with the way it rattles through his skull. Shiro pauses in front of him, concern wrinkling his perfect brows.

“Did you get the ibuprofen?”

Keith nods. He's embarrassed. Beat up by girl gang in an alley, almost carried home, passed out in his clothes—but no. That's not quite right. Keith looks down at his chest and the soft sweats hanging around his hips and then, because he's looking, gets to watch the blush creep up his own bare skin. “Where are my clothes?”

“...I thought it would help you sleep,” Shiro says after a moment's damning pause.

Some situations aren’t worth the time it will take to think about them. His plans for the day are simple: don't get jumped and make enough money to keep him and his dog-man freeloader in chocolate chip pancakes. It seems simple, but nothing since Shiro entered his life has been.

“You can come with me today. If you want.”

Shiro perks up from where his gaze was focused on the window. “You don't mind?”

“No.” As if he wouldn't beg Shiro. Keith can look out for himself; he won't get taken by surprise again, and still, with a desperation, he wants Shiro there. It's insurance and something else because that longing that lodged itself in the night before hasn't loosened in him, but it's like someone's handed him a pile of straw and asked him to spin gold out if it. He hasn't got the first idea how to make that feeling something other than annoying and useless.

Maybe, he thinks as he excuses himself to go get ready, it will go away on its own. Maybe, he thinks as he brushes his teeth, this is a psychological thing, a you-saved-me life-and-death thing, and now that Shiro's threatened to kill someone for him, he seems cool. Or maybe, he thinks as he steps out of the sweatpants he can't remember putting on, this is all delayed grief over losing the dog and he’s projecting on his new roommate.

Not that he's lost. Not technically.

When he looks up, Shiro is standing at the door of the bathroom in all his three-legged glory, as if summoned by the thought. Keith smiles despite himself and then realizes he's standing in the nude before him, underwear in hand.

They make fatal eye contact and both look away at the same moment, and then back, and Keith isn't a blusher. He doesn't get flustered. Twice in one morning—

Shiro averts his gaze to the ceiling.

“Get—out!”

Shiro spins on his heels and skitters out of the room.

 

* * *

 

“You didn’t need to wear the collar,” Keith mutters without looking down.

Shiro doesn’t reply—he can’t reply—but he does speed up. Keith matches his gate. The part he’s only starting to get is that while Shiro is of average intelligence as a human and above average as a dog, he’s still a dog. He had to wait by the door for a solid two minutes as Shiro stretched and then worked out an inch on his back. Keith broke down and lent a hand, if only to expedite getting out the door.

Keith isn’t entirely sure that if he saw a mail man, he wouldn’t start growling.

The thought is confirmed a few minutes later when a squirrel runs across the street and Keith can see Shiro’s muscles tense and then relax at the precise moment Keith asks, “Really?”

He's going to need a story, an explanation for Shiro at the dinner, but he's drawing blank after blank. Maybe Shiro can sit out front of the shop and drum up business for them. They're the first ones there. Keith directs him to sit by the front window, within view of the main counter. He's tall enough that his head sticks up above the brick sill below the window; Keith can watch him as he starts prepping for the lunch rush—their only rush, really.

Sal arrives a few minutes later. Keith is watching and so he gets to see Sal’s reaction at their guest.

“Whose dog is that?” Sal asks. He stomps inside and hangs up his coat with force, but everything he does is a bit heavy handed; Keith doesn't take it personally.

“He's mine,” Keith admits after a long moment of considering whether it's worth it to lie. He doesn’t look up from the counter where he’s doing his best and most exquisite job of cutting slices of ham into perfect squares. It’s not as if he can throw Shiro under the bus and say he’s a stray.

Sal freezes mid-way through tying his apron. “ _You_ have a dog.” Less a question, more a judgment. “Since when?”

Keith can do many things, but lying isn't one of them. He knows that, so he hums instead, half-shrugging. Maybe he's always had a dog. Sal doesn’t know him. Sal doesn’t know his life.

He snorts. “It can't stay out there. He looks like he's going to start asking people riddles before they can get in the goddamn door.” He mutters the last part under his breath, but he's not wrong. The height, scars, missing leg, and general demeanor make Shiro look less like a dog and more like some mythical crypt guardian sent to keep secure the virginal purity of all sandwiches and soups kept within their sacred doors.

Keith is scrambling for a last ditch excuse when Sal looks up at him, finally, and stops cold. “What happened to your hair, kid?”

For a moment he thinks it’s a general question about Keith’s hair’s permanent state of being which is somewhere between disheveled and bird nest cursed to mortal form, but then he remembers Shiro parting his hair and pasting a bit of gauze over the cut on the back of his scalp that morning. It took ointment and a couple of butchered band aids and fifteen minutes of him frowning over Keith’s head in the mirror.

“Accident. I got—hit. By a bike.” An idea occurs. He motions to Shiro. “That’s why I brought him with me. He’s a—you know.”

Sal’s mouth falls open a half an inch. “A what?”

“Sir," Keith takes a breath, "that is my emotional support dog.”

He looks for a moment like Keith has slapped him. “You. _You_ have an emotional support dog.”

“...Yes?”

He looks at Shiro, and then back to Keith, and then at the ceiling for a moment before he shakes his head and walks into the back. “Okay. Fine. If the dog drools, he’s out. And I’ve got a new kid coming in later. Interviewed him for cook yesterday.”

That’s fair. Sal put him in charge of soup one day while he was out and came back to a small disaster. _Salt to taste_ and _you can’t mess it up_ are subjective claims, apparently. Anyway, it's not a no. Keith flips the yellowed sign propped on the window sill to _open_ and brings Shiro inside. There’s no comfortable place to stow him, but there’s a corner where he can’t do too much damage.

 

* * *

 

Shiro ends up a hit. A couple comes in with a girl and a boy, both of whom gravitate to Shiro with the rapt, near hypnotic attention only small children can dedicate. Shiro tries to edge around the counter but Sal leans around the door to the back and glares at him at the first click of his paws on tile.

Keith can’t help him out of this one. This is a journey he has to take alone.

“He’s friendly,” Keith remarks when the mom makes to pull them back. “He actually loves kids.”  It seems like something that might be true about Shiro, even if Keith has no idea.

The betrayed glance Shiro sends him almost makes it worth it. The kids ask a few dozen questions about him, quiet and polite, as they pat at his back and head and Keith amuses himself with making up answers as he sorts out their food.

“What kind of dog is he?” the little girl asks.

Keith thinks about it a moment. “A big one.”

She nods with an air of adopted wisdom and smooths the hair around his scar as if he’s made of glass. Shiro holds still for it, as if he’s afraid of knocking her over by accident.

“How did he lose his leg?”

A question Keith would love to know the answer to, but hasn’t worked up the courage to ask. “Fighting a bear,” he offers. It seems at least as likely as anything else.

“What’s his favorite food?” the boy asks, and for that one at least Keith has an honest answer.

“Peanut butter.”

The boy's eyes get wide and a little hopeful and Keith realizes he's in the middle of spreading said butter on half of what's about to be a Mickey Mouse cut out peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's not a good decision, but once the possibility is running through his mind, it's there for keeps.

Keith finishes and then dollops one side of the knife with a more than generous serving of peanut butter and hands it off to the boy. If it's not a health code violation to feed a dog from the counter, it's only because no one thought they would have to specify a rule for that situation. Besides—they left the code behind a few hours ago, at about the time Shiro decided he could help himself to any scraps that landed too close to the edge of the counter.

The boy holds out the knife and Keith gets to see the exact moment Shiro's mind flips from majority human to majority dog.

He gloms onto the offering, scraping it off the knife in one massive bite,  and then starts licking and licking and _licking_. It's embarrassing to watch; Keith turns his gaze back to the counter and tries to stifle the giggle that wants to seize his chest every time Shiro smacks his lips.

The kids lose that fight early, and then the parents, and then Keith, too, but only because he makes the mistake of looking and gets a clear view of the desperation in Shiro's eyes as he tries to work it off the roof of his mouth

 _Sorry,_ Keith mouths.

By the time the family leaves, Shiro is almost finished and gathering a small crowd of admirers that include the start of the lunch crowd. It’s the most business they’ve had in the shop at one time in months. In a lull, Shiro makes a break for it and hides himself behind the counter almost between Keith's legs.

In the process he almost pushes Keith into the deli meat. Sal hears Keith’s oomph and leans in from the kitchen to glare at the two of them. Keith knees at Shiro’s side and Shiro pushes back, a brief struggle ensuing. The counter isn’t big enough for the two of them to stand behind, but he ends up with his head resting on Keith’s foot and Keith having to lean around to grab what he needs or risk dislodging him.

After those first two hours, the little thread of fear he hadn’t noticed rising in him at the sound of the bell on the shop door subsides and he stops expecting to see any unwelcome and familiar faces. Either they aren’t brave enough to come at him in broad daylight or Shiro’s threat had sticking power; he isn’t sure which is more of a comfort. Shiro might be a solid deterrent, but he can’t be around all the time. He can’t stay with Keith forever. Maybe when Shiro forgets about him, so will they.

The next time the bell rings, he doesn’t bother looking up right away. Not until a voice says his name.

“Keith?”

When he looks up it only takes a moment to place the man. Hunk. In their year as neighbors, he hasn’t ever gotten a straight word on whether it’s a nickname or not. It seems like it has to be. Keith nods at him and offers a quiet, “Hey,” in return.

“I didn’t know you worked here. You and, uh—” Hunk frowns, “—the dog. There’s a dog. That’s different. Cool. Is that—is that allowed?”

“That is… my emotional support dog.” Keith grits the words out, past the corpse of his fallen dignity.

Shiro doesn’t put out an atmosphere of civility or good training, and Keith remembers the moment after he says it that Lance knows exactly where Keith found him and there’s no way he didn’t relate the story to Hunk and probably Katie, too.

He may be shit at lying, but he’s also stubborn, so he doesn’t offer any other explanation.

Unprompted, Shiro nudges against Keith’s thigh and Keith reaches down to scratch at the back of his neck without thinking about it. It’s not weird. Or at least—it’s not as weird as anything else. That morning there was a warm spot on the other side of the bed when Keith woke up. He rolled into it without thinking, pushed his face into the heat until he realized the footprint of it was human sized more than dog sized and if they’ve slept in the same bed, a pat on the head isn’t so much.

Hunk is smiling in a way that makes it also look like he's also desperately concerned. “That's a big dog.”

“He's a mutt.”

Shiro jerks away. When Keith looks down he's doing his best approximation of a disappointed glare. It's diminished by the lack of eyebrows, but not so much so that Keith doesn't feel it where it hurts.

“I didn't mean it,” he mutters for Shiro's benefit, but Hunk hears and smiles and walks around the counter, reaching down an optimistic hand that Shiro snubs, snout up and to the side. Keith tries to be subtle about kicking at his hip but the only response is Shiro twisting his head the other way and closing his eyes. “Sorry, he’s just a little—you know.”

Hunk pulls his hand back. “You two seem close. Is he your friend's dog?”

It takes Keith a full twenty seconds to catch his meaning and then his brain decides static is easier to deal with than trying to form real thoughts. _Friend_. He knows what friend Hunk is talking about. This is a punishment for some unknown sin. This entire situation.

“Friend?” he manages, faint.

“The… guy? Sorry, I don't mean to be _nosy,_ but I saw you two on the porch yesterday and I thought you were fighting and then I saw the—” his eyes widen and he makes a little circle with his hand and motions to Shiro’s neck “—but anyway, we don't talk much, I know that, it's not my place to say or, or ask, but if you ever need help or...” he rolls his shoulders He trails off, leaving Keith staring at him in horror.

“He's just a friend,” Keith whispers.

Hunk nods. “He looked like a... friend.”

“Not that kind of friend. A normal friend.”

Hunk nods and nods and then shakes his head like he’s shaking the conversation out of it. “Hey, well, I should—”

He motions to the back and then excuses himself without even the facade that he doesn't regret the conversation as much as Keith regrets coming into work that day.

Once he's out of sight, Keith sinks to a squat and hides his face in his apron. Shiro nudges his way under Keith's arm and presses his wet nose to the sensitive skin on the back of his arm and then follows it with a wetter lick that smells horribly of peanut butter.

“Stop, stop—” He doesn’t. Shiro pushes forward, wiggling and trying to get at Keith's face for a full and thorough tonguing and then Keith is on his back and at his mercy before he can even put up a token fight. Shiro’s a dog right now, and this is what dogs do, and it’s not weird if he doesn’t think about it too deeply. Keith makes one last half hearted attempt to free himself, but loses the fight and starts giggling instead. No—he’s not giggling; it’s more of a low, husky laugh, limned in manly grace.

This is nothing more than a boy and his dog, doing boy and dog things.

When Shiro freezes, Keith rolls his head back and looks up through his mildly damp bangs. Sal and Hunk are staring down at them like they’re two school children caught fighting in the sand at a playground or worse—maybe like two teens caught necking behind the school. No. _No_.

“He’s a dog,” Keith says dumbly.

“Kid.” Sal bends and offers him a hand as Shiro scrambles off of him. “I think that accident rattled your head. Go home.”

 

* * *

 

“This is your fault.”

Shiro looks pleased with himself, tail up and swinging back and forth as he trots along. Keith speeds up until he’s one step ahead, same as that morning. Shiro follows in kind and extends his gait so he’s a paw ahead of Keith, but Keith is still peeved. He speeds up, too, and then they’re racing down the sidewalk side by side, Keith power-walking and Shiro power-hopping and still faster than Keith somehow.

They hit the front walk at a dead run and bang in through the front door the second Keith has it opened—racing to nowhere but unable to fight the primal need to win at this, for no reason at all.

Keith slams the door closed and then turns his best glare on Shiro who—

Is not a dog. He’s human and laughing, and it’s not ringing and clear but an open-mouthed guffaw, almost a bark. He has one leg pulled up for modesty’s sake where he’s collapsed against the wall, but he might as well not have bothered what with everything else that’s on full display.

“You’re—” the words are on the tip of Keith’s tongue, but he can’t give them life yet. He doesn’t know enough about this person, this near-stranger, but it feels like he might. It feels like more. He’s not mad and a persistent smile is pulling at his mouth. It feels like comfort, like kinship he hasn’t had in years and more than that because no one clicks like this with Keith. That’s his fault, but this man, by some luck, is the right fit.

Shiro tilts his head when his laughter dies. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” It’s true. For once, nothing in the world is off kilter. He’s hungry and his head still hurts, but it’s not so bad.

After a moment of searching his face, Shiro sighs out his name, soft and cajoling. “Keith.”

“Why are you here?” Keith asks all at once, before the words can crawl back into his chest. He knows all Shiro's reasons, but none of them quite seem enough. Nothing is worth spending two weeks with a total stranger—not one like Keith, anyway.

Shiro’s smile falters and then falls away, line by line. “Well…”

“I mean, you have a family, right?”

That’s it, he realizes the moment the question falls off his lips. Shiro has people and he’s wasting his time here with Keith. He has people, and he'll leave one day, sooner than later, and why wait for it?

Shiro rolls his shoulder. “Not really. I have… friends. I have a pack.” He scratches at the collar and then pushes the hair back off his forehead, though it falls again as soon as he takes his hand away. It lands messy but somehow shows more of a concession to style than Keith has ever managed to with his hair—not that he’s tried. “They’re like a family.”

“Then why aren’t you with them? Don’t they need to know where you are?” He winces at his own question after asks it. Self-sabotage is a gift.

“They know where I am,” Shiro says, voice even. He’s staring at the wall ahead of him now, at nothing. “I just needed to get away.”

Keith snorts. “Some vacation. You got beat up and then put on babysitting duty.”

Whatever he expects, it’s not what he gets. Shiro grins at him, bright enough that it shows his teeth. “Keith. This is the best week I've had in years.” He has to stop doing the thing with his eyes, the low directly sparkle, the way his smile goes so wise and twisted that it wrinkles the skin of his nose. The scar makes him look younger somehow.

He has to look away.

“How many w—people are in your pack?” he asks to change the subject, totally without subtlety. He still can’t make himself say the word.

Shiro cinches his brows and starts counting on his fingers by fives; he goes through it so many times that Keith loses count secondhand. “Thirty or so. It’s not the biggest, but we’re close.”

He gets the impression Shiro could have given the number off the top of his head. He probably knows every name and birthday by heart. Keith tries to imagine being responsible for three people or ten, let alone thirty, and wants to crawl in a hole. He tries to imagine knowing that many people, caring about them and for them day in and day out, worrying about them. “That’s big. What do you guys do? Are you like a club?”

It’s not funny, but Shiro still breathes out a laugh at the  suggestion. “We help each other. We can’t change what we are, and we need that connection, wherever we can get it.” He rolls his head toward Keith. “Everyone needs that connection.” His eyes are deep and kind and they see through Keith, right to the heart of him.

_Everyone needs that connection._

“Can I ask another question?”

It's not one he means to ask. The words are faint, as if part of him knows he'll regret it and is hoping Shiro won't hear and say yes. He doesn’t say anything, though, only cocks his head to one side, face open. Before he can stop himself, he asks, “Is that how you lost your arm?”

He only realizes once the question is settling in the air between them that it doesn’t make sense in context. _That_ , he means. All of _that_. Being what he is, being around others like him, and the fear that ran Keith to ground the night before and only now is starting to loosen its hold on him.

Shiro freezes. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

Sorry isn’t the right reply and neither is _that’s rough, man,_ so Keith says nothing. It makes it more real, more horrific. He imagines Shiro supine in the mud in the dark in the forest where Keith found him, struggling as something bigger than him approaches, and the sound of it, the sound of that brand of violence—

“Hey.” Shiro rises and pads over to him, still painfully nude, and wraps his arm about Keith’s shoulder. In all Keith’s life, he’s never been so well stocked in hugs. Shiro is going to spoil him with it, because it’s perfect. With him, it never feels like too much or too long. He’s warm and there and nothing else. He brings his arms up around Shiro’s back, fingers on bare skin, and holds him in kind.

As far as hugs go, it’s the longest he can remember, and it’s hard to rank this against a memory fifteen years old, but it’s probably one of the best, too.

With a naked man he barely knows.

Shiro pulls away and Keith tries not to look as he stands. They left his clothes folded in the hallway for easy access before they left; Keith is closest. He reaches for them blind and tosses them in what he hopes is Shiro’s direction. It hits and Keith stares in a wall-ish direction until the sounds of cloth pulling over skin fades.

When he looks up, Shiro is fully clothed and smiling again. “How would you feel about coming with me to pick up a few things?”

Do I have a choice? he almost asks, but it’s not how he feels in truth. He wants to stay with Shiro for as long as he can and that thought is terrifying. That thought makes him want to run. Instead he nods. “Sure.”

Shiro borrows his phone. He sends off a series of texts, expression shifting from optimistic to bemused to something that wrinkles his brow and the corners of his mouth and has him leaning over the phone as he pecks out increasingly short-worded messages.

“He’ll come pick us up,” Shiro says at last, setting the phone down on the counter a little harder than is called for. “No one’s at the house so it should be fine.”

Keith frowns.

“Not that I don’t want you to meet them, but… they can be a lot.”

That’s fair. Keith isn’t ready for a lot. He’s not sure if he’s ready for this—but it can’t be that bad. People are their own category of intimidating, but it’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with on a daily basis. Having Shiro there will either make it better or worse.

Maybe, somehow, a bit of both.

 

* * *

 

Matt arrives only fifteen minutes later than he said he would, which is almost running early by his usual standards. Shiro and Keith are waiting outside for him, only because Shiro is sure that Keith's admirers won't have the guts to come at him in the daytime with Shiro at his back and it’s a nice enough day.

“Did you have to bring the jeep?” Shiro asks when Matt steps out of the beloved wreck. “How did you get here so fast, anyway?” It’s only a little sarcastic.

“Don't talk about her like that. She only gets better with age. And I know a shortcut. Katie lives over there.” He points two houses down. That explains how they ran into him, at least. He steps forward and holds out a hand. “Keith?”

It's a question only for the sake of politeness; he knows who Keith is because Shiro told him before he asked if they could get a ride and then if there was anyone at the house and then again if there was anyone at the house because that's not a situation he would spring on anyone by surprise and not on Keith in particular.

Keith takes it, but his shoulders are so tense Shiro can smell the nerves on him. “Sorry—about the knife, I mean. I just…” he glances to the side, “...thought you were dangerous.”

It's not a compliment Matt deserves. He couldn't hurt a fly—not that he wouldn’t try, but his coordination isn't always so good as a human. It's an old joke and Katie ribs him for it all the time. Sam let him spend too much time shifted as a kid. It would explain his hair at least. Matt's eyebrows go up and then a smirk rolls across his face as he puts a hand to his chin. “Well… makes sense. I can be intimidating. It's fine, kid.”

“Get in the car,” Shiro holds out his hand and Matt drops the key in his palm without even a token fight, “and don’t call him a kid. He’s older than you.” Shiro says over his shoulder and pulls open the driver's door. “And he's got shotgun.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you know where you're going?” Matt asks from the back ten minutes and four cul-de-sacs later.

“Yes. Yes, I do.” It's this neighborhood. No neighborhood needs this many cul-de-sacs. A cul-de-sac is an inefficient use of space anyway, it doesn't make sense as a city plan, and this is why urban sprawl is a problem. No—it's Keith's fault for living in a neighborhood like this. For one, it's dangerous and the streets are too narrow and maybe it's a little bit the jeep's fault for having a turning radius that necessitates a full three point turn every time he goes down a dead end.

“Are you sure you know—”

“Yes!”

He makes a hard right and goes another block before he realizes he's rolled them into the fell jaws of yet another dead end. He feels for a moment like he might get out of the vehicle and lie on the asphalt, but then Keith reaches out and sets a hand on his arm and the feeling falls away like it was never there at all.

“I could drive,” he offers and when Shiro looks at him, his eyes are shining. Shiro almost says yes, but doesn't, only because the instinct to say so is accompanied by a wild giddiness that has no place in that moment. It's the same emotion he felt that morning, racing ridiculously down the sidewalk with Keith there, running to run. The feeling seems like it should mean something and maybe it does, but he can't remember what. He wants to give Keith more than is his to offer.

From the backseat, Matt groans.

They find the freeway with two more wrong turns and only a little more bitching from peanut gallery. Keith doesn't join Matt in the pile on, so he goes up another unbelievable notch in Shiro's already high estimation. After that, it's only three exits and another drive down a mostly empty tree-lined road that has Keith staring out the passenger window, rapt.

Matt wasn't lying about their lack of guests at least. The driveway is empty even Shiro pulls up and it's a relief; they have a sort of coming occupancy of whoever feels like avoiding home for a few days. The free food doesn't hurt.

“What,” Keith asks as Shiro stops and steps out of the Jeep, “is your definition of a house?”

Shiro glances up at the building. Front door, front walk, windows—it's a house. It's big, but not that big. Maybe it's the stained glass window above the front door—nothing fancy, just some nondescript trees. Shiro shrugs. “It's not much, but—” He shrugs again, for emphasis. Keith doesn't follow them to the front door, still staring up at the second story balcony with wide eyes.

Shiro tests the door and then glares at Matt when it opens. “You couldn't lock it?”

“No one comes out here, man.”

No one but the entire pack and now Keith, too. Keith with gauze on the back of his head. Keith with half-moon cuts on his neck and cheek. Shiro is sure his chances against anything that might come at them are more than fair—fairer with Keith and Matt behind him. There's nothing he excels at better than protecting; it's a quirk of his kind and his rank. He doesn't realize he's started a low growl until Matt steps past him into the house and sends him a Look on the way.

Shiro is lucky the tone of it is too deep for Keith to pick up on.

They leave Keith on the couch in the living room. He still looks a bit shell-shocked, so Shiro flips on the TV for him. “I'm just going to pack. Should be a few minutes. Do you need anything?”

Keith shakes his head, eyes now glued to the TV that takes up most of the wall. Not Shiro's choice, but most of what goes in the house is by someone else's design and Shiro's money. The set is playing one of those rebooted cop shows. A boat explodes, the colors of it reflecting in Keith's big eyes.

“No? Food? Anything?”

He shakes his head again. Shiro sets the remote in his hand before he goes, figuring he needs some alone time with it, and wanders toward the stairs.

Matt corners him the second he’s out of sight of the living room and pushes him toward the kitchen. “What is going on with you?”

Straight to the point. He's merciless. Shiro preferred him as the nerdy little kid Sam made him babysit on weekends. “No one else is coming today, right? You're sure?” Shiro asks. Not an answer, but he can only handle explaining this to one person at a time right now.

Matt frowns. “Yeah. Pretty sure. Do you want to explain why you smell like—boy?”

Shiro glares at him and reaches over to turn on the tap to cover their conversation. “He's human, not deaf. And he's older than you.” Matt rolls his eyes and Shiro decides yo grab a glass of water just for appearance's sake. “Do you want to explain why you aren't in school?“

Matt's faux-affront transitions into a cool shrug. “Personal day.”

Of course. He only takes twelve per semester. But then, the last two times he took a day it was to go to the museum or something else ridiculous and boring—not that Shiro's one to talk. He wonders if that's Keith's pace, too. Maybe he'd enjoy a trip to the museum, or maybe the aquarium over in the city. Shiro's treat. There's a zoo, too, but that might be problematic. Animals can sense more than people. Maybe drive down to the beach would be best. Take a nice walk on the beach at sunset, rent a cottage for the weekend—

“You're _drooling_.”

Shiro slaps his hand over his face. “I am not,” he mutters, wiping at his chin. “This is serious. He got attacked last night.”

Matt frowns. “By who?”

“You know.”

All of them know. The group isn't a threat only because of their distance and the comfortable fact that Shiro has a reputation. It takes a lot to win a fight against another leader and more when you're down an arm. Shiro has never lost—not even when they took his arm.

Matt’s frown deepens and he raises his brows. “No—not the Spice Girls.”

Shiro closes his eyes. “There are four of them, not five. Please stop calling them that. Please.”

“I thought they were further south, though?”

“Not anymore. I'll talk to Sam about it.”

“...Is the kid okay?”

“Yes, _Keith_ is fine. He's stronger than he looks.” The words might come out a little too proud, a little too fierce. Nothing Keith doesn't deserve. He is strong, and his body is wired with muscle. The phantom touch of Keith's fingers digging into his back that morning will be hard to shake; as soon as it was over, a part of him wanted it back. A part of him would have done anything to have that body against his again.

He must be projecting some of it, because Matt lowers his head and leans in. “Is this a midlife crisis thing?”

He can't play dumb. Scent doesn't lie. “I'm thirty,” he replies, because that's too young for a midlife crisis and even if it weren't, this wouldn't count. Keith doesn't count. Thirty isn't old and wanting to protect a friend isn't a crisis.

“I know.” Matt keeps his head lowered, as if something in Shiro's scent is still off. “But you left for a week without telling anyone where you were going—”

“Everything was handled. Everything.” He made arrangements with Sam and Colleen and even tapped another pack to stay on standby and back them up if something happened. He could have been back in a day if they'd needed him. “I just…” He doesn't know how to say that he loves them, would fight for them, would die for them, but twelve years in the same place doing the same thing with the same responsibilities is starting to rub at his edges. “I don't know.”

“...So you ran off and found some nubile young thing to shack up with?”

“Again, he's older than you.” Shiro scrubs his hand over his scalp, roughing up his hair. “And it’s not like that. I was hurt and he was warm.” And, by some rare luck, when he'd come back to himself, Keith was more. He's beating blood and fierce and maybe the accusation isn't so far off the mark. Three mornings in a row he woke up with Keith in bed beside him, still asleep, even if his body wasn't.

Arousal on him smells undefinable—heady, like sweat, like smoke, like something Shiro wants to sink his teeth into for hours. It makes him warm in kind.

Matt's expression sours. “You're drooling again.”

“I am _not—_ ”

They both jerk up at the approach of footsteps. Keith is quiet and human ears are dull, but it's still enough forewarning to stage Matt at the fridge and Shiro at the sink, a parody of domestic banality as Keith walks in.

He looks back and forth between them, eyebrow wrinkling. “I just wanted some water.”

He's lying, but only a little. Shiro makes to hand him his glass, but thinks better of it and gets him a fresh and drool-free one as Keith continues to look back and forth between them and Matt wastes electricity staring into the refrigerator's unexplored depths. God knows what's in there. Katie set up a science experiment once and none of them are sure a part of it didn't crawl to the back of the veggie drawer and set up shop.

“So, Keith.” Matt closes the door and turns to him, gaze quirked in what must be an attempt at artful effect. “Do you attend school?”

 _Attend school._ Shiro rolls his eyes and butts in with, “Do you?”

Matt folds his arms defensively. “Yes.”

“This week?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Keith interrupts whatever Matt was going to fire back with a quiet, “Yeah.” That's news to Shiro. He turns to Keith, a question in his eyes, and Keith gives a little shrug. “Had to take some time off. You know. Money.”

Matt nods, as if he's ever had a job or had to pay for school, as if Sam and Colleen didn't take Katie and him to Cinque Terre every summer for most of their childhood. His expression seems to be affecting something so heavy it's almost humorous. “What were you going for?”

Keith looks at him and then at Shiro and then down at his folded arms. He toes the floor with one boot as he mumbles, “Vet tech.”

Shiro almost thinks he's misheard, but no. Matt puts a hand over his mouth, eyes suddenly bright. It explains a lot. It explains how he patched Shiro up and maybe how he was able to carry Shiro home. It doesn't explain why he can't tell the difference between a dog and a wolf, but that's a question for another day.

“That's great, Keith,” Shiro tells him and means it as takes Keith by the elbow and pulls him toward the stairs, intent on getting out of the room before Matt can think of something smart to say. They’ll have weeks of it. Months of it. He’ll never let this go. “Come help me pack?”

When he glances back over his shoulder, Matt’s braced himself on the granite counter with one hand, head bowed, shoulders shaking.

They make it to the stairs before Matt yells from the kitchen, “Hey, do you guys ever play doctor?”

“That’s inappropriate,” Shiro snaps back and pushes Keith into his room.

 

* * *

 

Packing goes fast. All he really needs is his phone, a charger, and a few changes of clothes that don’t make him look like he belongs on the side of a roll of paper towels. He pretends he can’t hear the change in Keith’s heartbeat when he starts shoving underwear in the bag in Keith’s hands and then pretends he’s better than to be embarrassed about something that small, too. It’s nothing compared to sleeping naked next to someone.

It’s like packing for a sleepover, he tells himself, except he hasn’t had one of those since he was eight. Nothing since has warranted bringing an extra set of clothes to someone’s house. He’s never cared enough to bother. Somehow, Keith’s frog-jumped every other near relationship he’s had.

They’re down to one word sentences and near-fatal embarrassment by the time they get out of the room.

Shiro grabs the keys to the SUV out of the kitchen and considers an attempt at escaping without Matt noticing, since he’s nowhere to be seen, but they only make it to the front steps.

“Wait, Shiro.”

Matt beckons him and Shiro waves Keith toward the big black beast. Hopefully he won’t question why a man without kids owns a seven-seater. Sometimes it feels like he has two dozen kids—being leader is more about giving free rides than anything else, he’s figured out.

When he gets to the door, Matt pulls him inside, right out of ear shot. “You don't need to lie next time. Sorry for teasing. It’s okay if you guys are a thing.”

Shiro tries to come up with a sentence that won’t condemn him in the wording. “We’re not a thing,” he says delicately.

Matt sneers. “Dude, his whole face smells like your mouth. It’s fine.”

Shiro feels red burn up from his neck because no, he's mistaken somehow. There have been four moments that day already that Shiro might have crossed that line, but didn't. Before they called, after Keith asked about his arm, when he was sitting on the floor in front of Shiro, fear and sorrow leaking through his scent in sympathetic pain. Or earlier, when Shiro watched him dress, because there was a bruise over his shoulder that looked like it needed to be touched. Or, maybe, that morning when Shiro woke up with his face an inch away from bare skin and pried himself out of bed with the last of his integrity intact.

Maybe a moment after that, when he left water and pills on the nightstand and almost reached out to arrange the hair off Keith's forehead, too.

He didn't, though. He hasn't touched Keith's face once—except at the dinner. Shiro puts a hand over his face. “No—no. It's not like that. I was shifted.”

“...You know that doesn't make it better, right?”

He might have a point but it's not one Shiro has time to acknowledge so he steps out after Keith and waves at Matt with his middle finger.

At least Matt doesn't know he's been sleeping in Keith's bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can come chat or watch me repeatedly mess up simple tasks and beg god for forgiveness on [twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir), [tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/), and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/arahir)!!


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